The arguments many use when speaking out against the minimum wage just flat-out don’t make any sense. The most common one being that, somehow, the minimum wage keeps other wages lower and stifles job growth. Of course, there’s nothing stopping companies from paying employees more, so why couldn’t these businesses just raise wages without federal mandates to do so? Couldn’t it be argued that the reason the minimum wage exists in the first place is because without it, many businesses tried to get away with not paying their employees fair value for their work?

Not only that, but what kind of jobs would be created by eliminating the minimum wage? Are we going to simply create twice as many jobs at around half the pay of a current minimum wage job? What the hell would the point of that be?

Good news, we just doubled our job creation! All the jobs you can get… at $3.63 an hour!

There are a lot of really idiotic stances Republicans take on any number of issues, but their opposition to the minimum wage is, by far, one of the worst.

“I have the full confidence that the American private sector, made up of the most innovative and productive people on this planet, won’t just create millions of jobs,” Rubio said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. “They will create millions of jobs that pay more. Because even the jobs that are being created now don’t pay enough. You can’t live on $10 an hour. You can’t live on $11 an hour.”

“We need jobs that pay much more than that, but we have to have an economy and economic policies that make America the best place in the world to create jobs that pay more,” he continued.

Again, nothing is stopping the private sector from creating higher-paying jobs. The rich in this country are doing better than they ever have and many corporations are making record profits. There’s absolutely nothing preventing most businesses from paying their employees more.

This notion that a law mandating that companies can’t pay their employees below a certain amount is what’s keeping wages low isn’t only ludicrous, it doesn’t even make sense.

If we eliminated the minimum wage the only people who’d see a pay raise are the people who don’t need one – the rich. Meanwhile the rest of the country would continue to fall further and further behind. If there’s one thing that trickle-down economics has proven over the past 30 years, it’s that nothing trickles down.

Allen Clifton is a native Texan who now lives in the Austin area. He has a degree in Political Science from Sam Houston State University. Allen is a co-founder of Forward Progressives and creator of the popular Right Off A Cliff column and Facebook page. Be sure to follow Allen on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to his channel on YouTube as well.